Scanning 4x5 and larger--an article suggestion

[Rider]

Since everyone wants to know how to scan their LF negs, and a lot of the questions often go un-answered or only half-answered, does a knowledgeable person out there want to put together a short article on the subject for the permanent articles section? I know it would be appreciated by a lot of people.

[Frank R]

Having just bought a scanner, made my first scans and sent them to a lab for printing, I think this is a great idea.

It would be a handy reference.

[Ken Lee]

With all respect, "How to scan LF negatives" is a bit like "How to print LF negatives": a subject of considerable depth and breadth.

If we remove "LF" from the subject, we get "How to Print", the subject of countless books, courses, workshops, etc.

If you are looking for introductory material, then it may be helpful to purchase/borrow/rent a scanner, and read the materials that accompany it.

[Ted Harris]

I agree with Ken. I have been thinking and thinking about how I would write such and article and what I would include. Every time I give up. As a comparison to reinforce Ken's comments, our scanning workshops are two and a half intensive days of hands on "how to" scanning LF negatives, and we cover all the basics and a fw advanced techniques but it does take that long to go through the basics and do it well, no idea how I would get it all in an article that didn't run book length and then, it still wouldnot have the needed "hands on."

IMO, the absolute most important, most necessary, must do, etc. thing to remember when scanning is to properly set your white and black points. That is, set your withe point so that you gt all the detail you want and everything outside of it is specular white. Set your black point so that you capture all the shadow detial possible/all the shadow detail you are interesed in capturing and let everything beyod that point go to black. If you do that right you will capture ALL the information you want to use in further image processing and you will have won most of the battle.

[jstraw]

I agree with Ken. I have been thinking and thinking about how I would write such and article and what I would include. Every time I give up. As a comparison to reinforce Ken's comments, our scanning workshops are two and a half intensive days of hands on "how to" scanning LF negatives, and we cover all the basics and a fw advanced techniques but it does take that long to go through the basics and do it well, no idea how I would get it all in an article that didn't run book length and then, it still wouldnot have the needed "hands on."

IMO, the absolute most important, most necessary, must do, etc. thing to remember when scanning is to properly set your white and black points. That is, set your withe point so that you gt all the detail you want and everything outside of it is specular white. Set your black point so that you capture all the shadow detial possible/all the shadow detail you are interesed in capturing and let everything beyod that point go to black. If you do that right you will capture ALL the information you want to use in further image processing and you will have won most of the battle.

Are you saying to set your white point to the highest non-white value for which you want image density and your black point to the lowest non-black value you want to register as not total image density?

[Leonard Evens]

I agree with Ted that setting the black and white points is the key. I would only add that sometimes, particularly if you are not completely sure about where you want them, it is advisable to set them a bit lower (for black) and higher (for white) than absolutely necessary. That gives you the freedom to adjust further in your photoeditor. A possible danger in doing that is that you will end up spreading values more than you might want.

Actually, I've never been able to figure out how most scanners work in this regard. I've always presumed that the hardware/firmware in the scanner does a raw scan, dividing the range of values in a fixed way between two set values and then splits that into the requisite number of discrete steps, e.g., 256 for 8 bit and 65536 for 16 bit. Then when you select black and white points in your scanning software, you select a more restricted range within that and spread the values out some more. If that were the case, it would make no essential difference if you did it with the scanning software or within your photoeditor. Can anyone comment on that matter?

[keith connelly]

...I'm not sure what controls you have but , I have a couple tip's...If your image is sharp detail...lower your aperture & un-sharp area.If it's not that sharp,bump them up a little.And if your doing a screened orig..increase your focus...a little,apeture real high,& un-sharp area increase that to.And adj. your contours to get a more Detail out of a photo that needs it.Although focus & contrast little to do with eachother the eye is fooled into thinking that an image with more contrast..is sharper.And if you have a drum scanner (in which you can change drums for better performance)..try putting scan as close to flange(side attached to scanner) as u can..when you do blow-up over 1000%..On some scans you can tell differance.

[roteague]

ViewCamera did a series on this not to long ago, if I remember correctly.

[paulr]

It might make sense for the author to act more like an editor, and solicit a few differing (but competent) opinions. So rather than a simple how-to, it would be more like an overview. Something like three general approaches with some discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of each.

It would be easy for me to write about how I do it, but I already know by name a half dozen people who would tear it to shreds! Same goes for any similar article they might write.